Explaining voting in the UK's 2016 EU referendum: Values, attitudes to immigration, European identity and political trust

Abstract

We consider the role of values as determinants of voting in the UK's 2016 EU referendum. First, we consider and clarify ‘values’ conceptually, before proceeding to utilise Schwartz's basic human values as the most appropriate. Second, we theorise how these basic human values determine both voting in the referendum as well as three of the most consistently demonstrated determinants of voting in that referendum: attitudes to immigration, identifying as European and trust in politicians. Finally, we demonstrate that this psychological theoretical framework effectively predicts voting behaviour in the referendum using multigroup structural equation modelling. Overall, we show that voting dynamics in the referendum are likely to reflect deeper, more personal psychological predispositions than those captured by existing explanations. In doing so, we make an original contribution to the literature on political psychology related to Brexit, Euroscepticism, political attitudes and electoral behaviour.